


(21. Treasures) / Carry You Home

by Mothfluff



Series: GO-ctober Prompts 2019 [21]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, October Prompt Challenge, One Word Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 21:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21125309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfluff/pseuds/Mothfluff
Summary: My attempts at an October Challenge, using the original Inktober prompts for drabbles.(Each prompt will be posted as part of a series, not chapters, so I can add tags/characters/ratings/trigger warnings for each instead of the whole she-bang)Prompt 21 - Treasures“I knew you were in London.” Aziraphale couldn't face him, and he didn't understand why.“You didn't blame me for this, angel.”“No. But.” A deep breath, a shaky hand clenching at his side. “I didn't look for you. I knew you were in the city, but I didn't-” Another deep breath before he could go on.“I sensed you in the city, but then I didn't, I couldn't, there was so much and so many people with- I thought you'd left, or gone, or... I couldn't look for you. I was so-”He stopped as his shaking hand was covered with another, warm even with its leather glove cover.“It's fine.” Crowley's voice was soft, careful, as if speaking to a scared child, a spooked animal. “I found you in the end.”“You always do.” Aziraphale laughed, glibly, more at himself than at anything else. “I'm sorry for being such a horrible friend.”





	(21. Treasures) / Carry You Home

London had been burning for five days, smouldering in its ashes for three more. People had died, many more had been made homeless, most of them were enraged, in despair, in mourning.

A demon would have had a field day, toying with their emotions, stoking the internal fire much as he would've stoked the real one days before.

Crowley cared for none of it.

He'd barely made it out of the flames himself, running wild in the streets, shooing children and yelling, looking. Searching.

He was still searching now, scanning his eyes across one of the many gathering places where people had put down blankets, small baskets, whatever they'd been able to salvage from the fires or carry out from them.

Their emotions were overpowering. Hundreds, thousands, swarming around his head, screaming into him and pulling on the more infernal bits of him, filling his senses so much-

He couldn't sense him. Hadn't for days. All he could do was look, and search, and hope.

A flurry of golden white hair, at the far back, half hidden behind a wall. He stumbled towards it, almost knocking over a little girl running past him, pushing aside the young man taking notes from one of the survivor's tales.

“Aziraphale?” It could be, or it couldn't – he wasn't the only fair-haired man in London, they hadn't seen each other for quite some time, all he knew was that he was still taking up residence in London somewhere, and there wasn't much but hope left in him to give after the past few days of searching.

The golden white hair turned, and his heart jumped at the sight of the so familiar face, even without its usual kind smile.

“Angel.” He half knelt down beside him. “I've been looking for you.”  
“Crowley.” A quiet voice to match his own. “I didn't know you were in London.” He sounded absent-minded, joyless. The rush of human emotion around them must've taken its toll with him as well. Crowley couldn't imagine how it must feel for an angel. He'd seen it worse before, the many disasters they'd witnessed, the few times it had moved the angel almost to tears. “Was this your side's doing?”

“Certainly not mine.” Crowley mumbled. To be fair, he didn't know – he hadn't heard of any such assignments, hadn't been given a warning to stay out of the city either, but you could never be quite sure. He remembered back to seeing the flames, feeling their heat, begging and pleading for it not to be hellfire, not to consume the city, or... him.

“No, you wouldn't do such a thing. Not your style.” A smile finally broke on Aziraphale's face, albeit a more joking one than usual. He'd not blamed this particular demon for any of the horrors they'd seen, not since Roman times. He knew him too well.

Crowley hated the fires, any of them. He'd seen what they could do far too often.

“Did you... get everything out?” His voice was still low, supposedly not to disturb the humans around them, to give them away, but maybe also because he didn't dare say too much. He'd seen Aziraphale lose everything before, in Pompeii, in Alexandria. He'd seen his reaction. He wished for it to never repeat.

“My books weren't in the city. They're with a dear friend, who has a bit more space than me to store them.”

“I see.” He wondered, for a split second, what human could have been so good as to earn the title of a dear friend with the angel, but that way laid worry and envy, and he'd done well in the past with stoking these down. He could already feel them creeping up his spine, spurned by the people around them who could hear, who were feeling the same, jealous of someone who had a quick chance at a new home.

He stood up instead, holding out a hand for Aziraphale to pull himself up.

“I can get you a horse, if you want. Get you to your friend's place.” Anything to help. Anything to get the angel out of the remnants of a great city, out of the mourning masses pulling him down.

  
Aziraphale had grabbed a small bag as they went on, an innocuous thing made of thick fabric, which Crowley recognised as not being anywhere from England, nor even this century. He didn't dare mention it until they were alone, down a quieter side street.

“What's all this, then? Some more books?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale's eyes fell down on the bag, pulling it close to his chest, almost protecting. “No. Nothing much. Just some things I could carry out.”

“Important things?”

“I suppose.”

The rest of their way was quiet. Crowley feared asking more, asking the wrong thing – he could scarcely read Aziraphale's face this time, usually so full of impressions, like an open book to him, ironically, as he didn't read much. Now it was barren, staring on the ground, even as they reached the little stable just outside city limits, where Crowley was owed several favours and called in almost all of them now.

“I lied.” He heard the whisper even between the clomping of hooves as he lead the horse he'd been handed towards the angel.

“You what?”

“I knew you were in London.” Aziraphale couldn't face him, and he didn't understand why.

“You didn't blame me for this, angel.”

“No. But.” A deep breath, a shaky hand clenching at his side. “I didn't look for you. I knew you were in the city, but I didn't-” Another deep breath before he could go on.

“I sensed you in the city, but then I didn't, I couldn't, there was so much and so many people with- I thought you'd left, or gone, or... I couldn't look for you. I was so-”

He stopped as his shaking hand was covered with another, warm even with its leather glove cover.

“It's fine.” Crowley's voice was soft, careful, as if speaking to a scared child, a spooked animal. “I found you in the end.”

“You always do.” Aziraphale laughed, glibly, more at himself than at anything else. “I'm sorry for being such a horrible friend.”

“Don't say that.” Crowley stopped him, but whether he meant the apology, the horrible part of it, or the friend part, he wasn't sure. He never quite was.

“I have to.” Aziraphale's look was steadfast now, pinned on Crowley, who was glad again for his spectacles hiding his own. “No one is going to hear this now, not with all the chaos and emotions and- the prayers around, the anger around. It's just us.”

He went to grab Crowley's hand, the one which had slowly drifted away from his own again.

“You're my dearest friend, Crowley, more than anyone else ever has been or ever will be. And for the past few days, I thought you were gone. I thought all I had left was this.”

He lifted the bag now, the soot-covered thing he'd gripped with all his might before, as if he would lose more than just material things if he were to let go. Pulled it open for all the world to see, but there was no one else to look at it but Crowley. Which, to him, was more than enough, more than the rest of the world would give him.

An oyster's shell laid nestled inside, small, fragile, yet kept perfectly unbroken for a over thousand years. A still blooming flower next to it, from a garden Crowley knew had fallen just as long ago, written about only in wonders and fairytales. A splinter of wood, glowing with holiness that burned in his eyes. A small goat's horn, polished to shine, stripped of the blood the sacrifice had left behind. A small wooden box, filled with potpourri that should've lost its scent decades ago. A necklace of pearls, simple yet beautiful, that had accidentally found its way into a painting hung somewhere in Italy, but had previously laid around the neck of a fiery-haired muse. A small scroll, short lines scribbled in a handwriting worse than his own, a poem he recognised in seconds from hearing it on stage.

Little talismans, tidbits, treasures. He knew each and every one. He'd seen them before. He'd been there. _They had been there._

His eyes shot up to meet Aziraphale's, whose face was shining red like the desert sun they'd spent so many years under, yet he did not look away. His eyes said more than his mouth could have.

“Just...things to remember.” He whispered nonetheless. His look sunk down on the open bag. “I like to collect.”

“I know.” Crowley said, an empty answer, yet it said more, said everything he couldn't say. He knew Aziraphale. He knew them. Deep down, in a part of his soul he didn't dare look lest it overtook him completely, he'd always known.

Silence seemed to stretch between them forever. How could you break this? How could you end this moment, this realisation that they shared? He'd done it countless times before, but for this, for once, he couldn't. He wouldn't.

“What will you take from this meeting?” He whispered instead, and Aziraphale's eyes shot up again.

“Crowley-”

“Let me give you something instead.”

And he leant over before the angel could protest, play his usual spiel of avoidance. Made him unable to speak, and not only because his lips were sealed with Crowley's.

A small kiss, a soft meeting, warmth against warmth – until something shifted, or rather, someone. An angel that turned his head just so, closed his eyes, leant forward just a bit more to ask-?

A demon who gladly answered, heat against heat now, lips that parted and sighed and found each other again, and again. A tongue brushing against teeth, being pulled in by another, hot breath that ghosted over each other's cheek. Aziraphale's hand on his face, in his hair, holding on tight without grabbing, as if that was the treasure he'd take away from this meeting, as if Crowley was the thing he wanted to hold and put in his bag and never let go again-

They let go, after minutes, hours, days, not really ever. Barely an inch, red plump lips still touching at the faintest spots, foreheads pressed together. Aziraphale's eyes tightly shut, as if looking would cause it to vanish, as if he was Orpheus pulling his love out of the Underworld and not risking his chance this time around.

Crowley's eyes were open, had been, had taken in every little wonder he could have, knowing it would end soon enough, that it would have to become only a memory to revisit. Things would change, and go back to where they had been before the fire, before the chaos, and the small refuge it had offered them from their sides.

“Not something to carry, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, I'll carry it.” Aziraphale finally answered as his eyes opened, his hands sinking from Crowley's curls down to his own chest. “Carry it right here.”

Crowley couldn't help but laugh a little, a short burst of air, a pleased little noise as his head sank. The moment was over, and he knew it, they both knew it, but neither could let go just now. Aziraphale would take the horse any minute now, ride off to somewhere else, where Crowley could not follow without being seen, report to his superiors about the good deeds he had done to help the citizens of London during their troubles. Not mention how he got out of the city, not mention the few moments beforehand, never mention anything again. But right now they were still here, still standing close, still collecting it all for their memories, for Aziraphale's little bag of treasures over the millenia.

He felt hands in his hair again, softer, more careful, as if he would shy away otherwise. One more little kiss, pressed against the crown of his head, a deep inhale as Aziraphale savoured his scent, clear and fresh between all the stink of ash and dirt around them. A quiet whisper, even softer, even more careful.

“My greatest treasure.”


End file.
